As the life span of human beings increases, the population as well as the dental profession has paid increasing attention toward techniques for preserving teeth, jawbone structure, and gums so that they will last the 75 to 90 years that is coming to characterize the life span of an individual who takes reasonably good health care of himself and is not fatally injured in an accident. Although the teeth with slip shod care would probably last for 40 years or so in most people, except for extraordinarily strong teeth acquired through heredity, without fairly consistent and meticulous care, the average set of teeth would not last nearly as long as the average person.
The original cleaning technique involved the use of a tooth brush, and soon commercial establishments were providing dentrifice compounds of various kinds, which ostensibly help clean the plaque and bacteria from the teeth. Along with the brush, different techniques for brushing have come into vogue, which in turn replace the prior technique, generally because it was alleged to have caused the receding of the gums. Current dental advice generally incorporates "dry brushing", wherein the bristles of the brush are wiggled for ten minutes along the gum line. Also, dental flossing has been highly recommended for years, but is increasingly emphasized to remove the plaque between the teeth and the gums below the gum line to avoid gum and bone recision.
Other techniques and equipment include the water jet technique, first marketed under the trademark Water-Pik. The Water-Pik was no doubt of some help, but nevertheless was restricted by the ineffectiveness of trying to force a small water stream into difficult to reach places with enough force left to do any real good.
The automatic tooth brush stimulates gums and cleans exposed surfaces well at high speed, but also erodes tooth enamel by constant use, thereby contributing substantially to one of the toughest dental problems faced by people as they age.
Additionally, when viewing all of the equipment and techniques now available, the bottom line really boils down to the reluctance on the part of busy people to take the time to execute a thorough dental hygiene program. With the most effective equipment and techniques in the world, obviously they are of no use unless they are used regularly and correctly.
Several forms of a handle-less brush, or brush ball, have been patented. These devices are for the purpose of insertion into the mouth, to be chewed, with extending bristles cleaning the surfaces of the teeth. One of these devices is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,853,412, issued to Gerald D. Griffin on Dec. 10, 1974. This device has a yielding, collapsible, hollow spherical ball in its principal embodiment with short brushes extending outwardly so that the user can chew the ball while the brush is cleaning his teeth. The hollow ball is perforated and contains dentrifice which extrudes through the perforation as the ball is chewed. While this may be somewhat effective, because the ball yields so much there is an absence of the really positive brushing action that one achieves through use of a tooth brush, and moreover, the user will wind up with a large quanity of toothpaste in his mouth, in places where there is no handy place to spit it out and rinse out his mouth.
Another patent issued to Christy F. Conder, U.S. Pat. No. 3,231,925, was issued Feb. 1, 1966, on a rubbery device like one of the jacks used to play ball and jacks. It is not really a brush, but the rubbery spike-like protusions will hopefully enter between the teeth and clean food particles from them.
Lastly, a tablet tooth brush was developed by Howard Cohen, and once was the subject of French Pat. No. 2,487,668, issued February 1982. A very small canvas strip mounts a series of short bristles which are coated with dentifrice with the bristles and central strip being contained within a soluble tablet. The bristles are not rigidly mounted, and the canvas is completely flexible so that a positive brushing action is not achieved.
There is a need for a brush ball or chewable mouth brush somewhat like those described in the above identified patents, but which provides a positive brushing action and which is shaped and dimensioned to be contained inconspicuously in the mouth and chewed like chewing gum, so that persons using the mouthbrush are not required to take time out of their daily lives to engage in an extensive, time consuming regimen of oral hygiene.